Various safety caps have been proposed to prevent children from opening containers containing medicines and pills. These safety caps have been constructed and arranged so that when placed on the container, they are very difficult to remove, and generally require a manipulation which has been found to be not only difficult for a child but also for an adult. Because of the difficulty in removing the safety cap, often times it will be replaced on the container in a non-child-resistant condition, and forgotten. To warn the user that a cap is on the container in a non-child-resistant condition, some safety caps have been provided with indicators.
After considerable research and experimentation, the child-resistant cap of the present invention has been devised which renders the cap difficult for a child to remove from a medicine container, when in the child-resistant mode, but which can be manipulated to a non-child-resistant mode for ease of removing the cap from and replacing it on a medicine container by an adult. The cap is also provided with an indicator to show the particular mode of the cap.
The cap of the present invention is of the type disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,394,829 wherein an inner cap is threadably mounted on the neck portion of a container, and a spring biased outer cap is mounted on the inner cap and fully rotatable thereon when in the child-resistant mode. Upon pushing the outer cap toward the inner cap against the biasing force of the spring, while rotating the outer cap, the inner and outer caps are connected in a locking relationship, whereby the inner cap and associated outer cap can be unthreaded from the neck portion of the container.
While the safety cap disclosed in the above-mentioned patent is satisfactory for its intended purpose, the operative arrangement of the various components employed in the cap results in the components becoming worn in a short period of time, thereby compromising the safety feature of the cap. For instance, the spring employed in the cap in the aforementioned patent is always in a biasing condition between the inner and outer caps causing the spring to eventually lose its biasing force memory. Also, the locking engagement of the outer and inner caps is provided by a tongue provided on the outer cap engageable with a groove provided in the inner cap; the frictional resistance between the tongue and groove being relied upon to hold the inner and outer caps in locked engagement for threading the cap back onto the bottle neck. The mating surfaces of the tongue and groove become worn resulting in a loss of the frictional resistance therebetween, thereby preventing the return of the safety cap on the bottle neck.
Furthermore, the safety cap disclosed in the above-mentioned patent does not include an indicator to show the child-resistant and non-child-resistant modes of the safety cap.
To overcome the disadvantages experienced with the above-noted safety cap, the condition indicating child-resistant cap of the present invention has been devised which comprises, essentially, an inner cap adapted to be threadably mounted on the neck of a medicine bottle, and an outer cap mounted on the inner cap. The outer cap has a pair of radially inwardly extending, diametrically opposed, flanges, or lugs, formed on the inner wall surface thereof and engageable with the peripheral edge portion of the top wall of the inner cap, to thereby hold the outer cap upwardly in spaced relationship to the inner cap, whereby the outer cap is freely rotatable on the inner cap, when the cap is in a child-resistant mode.
A pair of diametrically opposed groove configurations are formed in the outer circumferential wall surface of the inner cap in proximity to the top wall thereof and adapted to receive the outer cap flanges, whereby the outer cap may be moved downwardly and rotatably into interlocking engagement with the inner cap, to thereby place the cap in a non-child-resistant mode, wherein the cap can be unthreaded from the neck of the bottle. An elliptical spring is provided in each groove configuration and are adapted to engage the cap flanges to facilitate re-threading the cap on the bottle and to maintain the cap in the non-child-resistant mode.
A vertically extending post is mounted on the top wall of the inner cap in alignment with an opening provided in the top wall of the outer cap, whereby when the cap is in the child-resistant mode, the post is positioned within the space between the inner and outer cap and is not visible outside of the cap, to thereby indicate the child-resistant mode of the cap. The post is adapted to extend through the opening in the outer cap, when the outer cap is moved inwardly to interlocked position with the inner cap, and therefore visible outside the cap, to thereby indicate the non-child-resistant mode of the cap.
A pair of arcuate spring legs are integrally connected to the inner surface of the top wall of the outer cap and depend therefrom in a direction toward the outer surface of the top wall of the inner cap. The lower end portion of the spring legs are held spaced from the top wall of the inner cap when the cap is in the child-resistant mode by the outer cap flanges engaging and sliding on the peripheral edge portion of the inner cap, but engageable with the top wall of the inner cap to provide a biasing force to the outer cap flanges within the groove configurations when the cap is in the non-child-resistant mode.
A pair of upwardly extending ramps are integrally connected to the top wall of the inner cap and cooperate with the free ends of the depending spring legs to not only facilitate the movement of the outer cap flanges out of the groove configurations when the cap is being moved to the child-resistant mode but also to maintain the cap in the child-resistant mode wherein the outer cap is freely rotatable on the inner cap.
To further facilitate the outward movement of the outer cap relative to the inner cap a pair of upwardly-extending oppositely disposed inclined ramps are integrally mounted on the top wall of the inner cap on each side of indicator post and cooperate with a similarly configured pair of depending ramps integrally connected to the bottom wall surface of the outer cap adjacent the peripheral edge of the post receiving opening.